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Republicans: Reno should resign over Chinese spy probe

Posted: Monday, May 24, 1999

By Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- A Clinton administration ally, Democratic Sen. Robert Torricelli, said Sunday that Attorney Janet Reno's job should be on the line over the Justice Department's failure to actively pursue suspected Chinese spying in U.S. nuclear energy labs.

The Republican chairman of the Senate intelligence committee said Reno should lose her job in light of a congressional report, due for release this week, on Chinese espionage.

A Justice Department spokes man said Reno believes she acted responsibly and according to the Constitution.

A second Cabinet member, Energy Secretary Bill Richardson, whose department oversees the labs, said tighter security measures were in place at the labs and it remained unclear what secrets were stolen.

''We cannot overdramatize conclusions that are not conclusive yet,'' he said on ABC's ''This Week.''

A select House committee under Rep. Christopher Cox, R-Calif., planned to make public on Tuesday its findings on Chinese attempts to buy and steal U.S. technology for rocket launching and nuclear programs.

The report's conclusions have filtered out in recent weeks: that over the past two decades, China has obtained sensitive information about seven major weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Republicans said someone must take responsibility for the slow response to a security breach at the Los Alamos nuclear weapons lab in New Mexico that first came to light in 1995.

The Senate intelligence committee chairman, Richard Shelby, R-Ala., pointed to Reno, saying the attorney general and her top lieutenants should go.

''I believe it's time, considering her role, or lack of role, her trying to defend the indefensible,'' he said on CBS' ''Face the Nation.''

Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., also on CBS, agreed that ''some heads should roll.'' Somebody, he said, ''made some major mistakes here, and somebody needs to be accountable.''

GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., said on CNN's ''Late Edition'' that he would press for a full investigation and if officials ''are held accountable, they are going to go to jail.''

Torricelli, on CBS, was nearly as critical, saying Reno's failure of judgment in the Los Alamos case were ''inexplicable.''

''I think it's time for President Clinton to have a conversation with the attorney general about her ability to perform her duties and whether or not it is in the national interest for her to continue,'' said Torricelli, D-N.J.

The lawmakers specifically pointed to the Justice Department's repeated denials of requests by the FBI to wiretap Los Alamos scientist Wen Ho Lee, who is suspected of passing secrets to the Chinese.

The department said there were insufficient grounds for a court order to monitor Wen, who was fired from the lab this March, three years after he first came under suspicion.

Some Republicans have urged Reno to resign over her refusal to request appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate alleged Chinese contributions to Clinton's 1996 presidential campaign.